[GushShalom] Terrible decisions & action news

[keller_adam at yahoo.com]

Gush Shalom pob 3322 Tel-Aviv 

[] Gush Shalom emergency ads protesting terrible decisions 
[] Peace Now protest march Saturday night in Tel-Aviv
   SAVE THE COUNTRY !  DOWN WITH THE OCCUPATION !
[] Report on the Sept. 18 court martial session of "The Five"
[] Lily Galili in Haaretz: Reserve pilots to refuse liquidations


           //\\//\\//\\

[] Gush Shalom emergency ads protesting terrible decisions 

“Haaretz” and “Jerusalem Post” - emergency ad:

				HALT!
		
The decision of the Bush administration to veto the Security Council
resolution forbidding the assassination of Yasser Arafat is a scandal of
historic dimensions.

The assassination of the Palestinian president, who was elected by a massive
majority under the supervision of former president Jimmy Carter, will cause a
catastrophe for Israel and the United States..

0  Arafat is the only Palestinian leader who has the moral authority and the
political power to make peace with Israel and convince his people to accept
it.

0  After his assassination, the Palestinian Authority will collapse.

0  The Palestinian liberation movement will splinter into hundreds of violent
groups, each of them intent on killing Israelis and Americans.

0  The most extreme Islamic fundamentalists will take over the leadership of
the Palestinian nation.

0  The name of Arafat, the martyr, will become the battle-cry of militants
throughout the Arab and Muslim world, creating thousands of new Bin Ladens. No
place on earth will be safe.

0  An unbridgeable abyss will open between Israelis and Palestinians, making
peace and reconciliation impossible for generations to come.

It will create an existential danger for Israel.

  
				  			GUSH SHALOM


Help us with donations to P.O.Box 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033, Israel 



September 19, 2003


(Haaretz - weekly ad on page 2)

The Palestinians
Offer a general 
And comprehensive
Cease-fire.

Those who
Rejected this offer
Will be responsible
For the death
Of hundreds of
Human beings,
Israelis and Palestinians.

Who gave
Sharon and his generals
The right
To take this
Terrible decision?


Help us with donations to 
P.O.Box 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033, 
Phone 972-3-5221732.
www.gush-shalom.org  
Requests for information: 
info at gush-shalom.org

Published in “Haaretz”
September 19, 2003

[] Peace Now protest march Saturday night in Tel-Aviv
   SAVE THE COUNTRY !  DOWN WITH THE OCCUPATION !

----- Forwarded message -----
From: Sylvia Piterman <oritp at inter.net.il> 
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 18:09:52 +0200


Saturday night, 20 September, at 19:30, 
PROTEST MARCH, From the Rabin Memorial at Rabin Square to the Ministry of
Defense, Tel Aviv, Calling: 
  SAVE THE COUNTRY ! ENOUGH OF BLOODSHED - ENOUGH OF SETTLEMENTS - ENOUGH OF
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE - ENOUGH OF MORAL DEGRADATION - ENOUGH OF SHARON ! DOWN WITH
THE OCCUPATION !
  Transportation from Jerusalem will leave GAN HAPA'AMON parking lot at 18:15.
  JOIN US !


[] Report on the Sept. 18 court martial session of "The Five"


--- Anat Matar <matar at post.tau.ac.il> wrote:
From: "Anat Matar" <matar at post.tau.ac.il>
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2003 00:44:25 +0300

The trial of the five conscientious objectors refusing to be drafted into an
occupation army  resumed today at the military court in Jaffa. For long hours,
the prosecutor, Captain Yaron Kostelitz, cross-examined the defendants Haggai
Matar and Matan Kaminer. Both defendants rejected the prosecutor’s claim that
conscience is nothing but a nice word meant to enable anyone to do whatever he
or she wishes. They repeated their explanations of why their objection to be
drafted is motivated by deep conscientious considerations. 

Haggai Matar noted that he did not agree with the conceptual characterizations
offered by the prosecutor, regarding such notions as pacifism, political
refusal and conscientious objection. The prosecutor presented him with a list
of hypothetical situations, in order to find out under what conditions he
would agree to be drafted into the Israeli army. In his answer, Matar
described the complexity of his conscientious decision and the way it is
anchored in current circumstances. “I cannot sum up my opposition in one short
sentence. At the moment, I see evil and inhumane acts committed by the Israeli
army, and since its actions are inhumane, immoral and in my opinion also
illegal, I conscientiously refuse to take any part in this army under present
circumstances.” Fantastic hypothetical scenarios are irrelevant to the present
situation, Matar said, and it’s impossible to answer such abstract questions
or refer to descriptions of situations devoid of any context. Replying to the
prosecutor’s claim, that what was described by him as evil was confirmed as
legal by the Israeli High Court of Justice, Matar noted that some of the HCJ’s
decisions are indeed illegal according to international law. When the
prosecutor attempted to characterize his refusal as political rather than
conscientious, Matar replied that his position is both political and
conscientious, and that it is impossible to break these two spheres apart –
yet a distinction must be made between a political stand and a position taken
by a political party. “Conscience isn’t a party platform,” said Matar, “and
its dictates are much clearer regarding disapproval and refusal than regarding
obligations to commit certain acts.”

The questions posed to Matan Kaminer were almost identical to those posed to
Haggai Matar. Kaminer repeated and emphasized the principles he enumerated in
his original testimony- those principles which led him to refuse the draft. “I
oppose violence in general,” he said; “only extreme conditions could make the
use of violence legitimate, and such extreme conditions are far from existing
here and now. If we leave the Occupied Territories completely, if we allow the
establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state, and if we live in
peace and equality alongside this state, cooperating with it economically and
culturally , then the existential situation in the region will be drastically
different. There will be no suicide bombs and no violent actions committed by
Palestinians against Israeli citizens. The mandatory draft will be irrelevant,
but if there is still need of an army under these conditions, then I’ll be
ready to take part in it.” Kaminer emphasized that in his opinion the state
should – as far as possible – treat any consciences with respect and
tolerance, but that his own conscientious motivations for refusal, ensuing
from a humanist, rationalist and democratic conception, are essentially
different than other motivations for refusal, such as those based on religious
and nationalistic grounds. “I love this country and the people living in it,
and I want to keep living in it and change it, so that it is a better place to
live in. My refusal is part of this change.”

Both Matar and Kaminer, replying to the prosecutor’s questions regarding the
duty to obey the law in a democratic state, said that Israel is not fully
democratic. A state ruling over 3.5 million people denied the right to vote,
cannot presume to be a state whose decisions are all reached in a democratic
procedure. South Africa during Apartheid wasn’t a democratic state, they said,
and the classical Greek democracy was faulty since only men of certain status
enjoyed the right to be represented, whereas the rest of the Polis inhabitants
did not. “Either let the inhabitants in the occupied territories the right to
vote or stop ruling them,” said Kaminer.

The next court session, with the cross-examination of the three other
defendants, Shimri Tzameret, Adam Maor and Noam Bahat, will be held on October
20th, 2003 .  
 
[] Lily Galili in today's Haaretz: Reserve pilots to refuse liquidations

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/342136.html

Reserve pilots to refuse liquidations

By Lily Galili



A group of reserve pilots in the Israel Air Force
is planning to publicly announce their refusal to
participate in attempts to assassinate senior
wanted men in the Palestinian Authority.



The group has been discussing
the initiative for more than
three months and members say
that they have been badly torn.
According to sources in the
movement of soldiers who refuse
to serve in the territories,
the group is in the process of
collecting the last signatures
and is waiting for "the right

moment" to issue its announcement.

The various refusal movements view the pilots'
planned declaration as a big boost for their
cause, due to the special status enjoyed by
pilots in Israeli society, and hope that it
will shake up Israelis in a way that "ordinary"
refusals have not. Though one pilot joined the
refusal movement at the start of the intifada,
and though there were a few incidents during
the Lebanon War of pilots refusing to bomb
specific targets, a declaration by an organized
group of pilots would be something new.

The pilots initially considered joining one of
the existing refusal movements, such as Courage
to Refuse - the group of soldiers and officers
who signed a declaration of refusal to serve in
the territories more than 18 months ago.
However, they eventually decided to form an
independent group.

Since Courage to Refuse was founded, with 50
members, more than 500 soldiers have signed its
letter of refusal. However, the group has
failed in its goal of provoking a public
discourse over the continued occupation of the
territories and Israel Defense Forces actions
there. It is now hoping that the pilots'
declaration will succeed where it has failed.















__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com